The ACLU is looking for the ninth of the Ten Commandments --
monuments, that is.
For years, civil rights attorneys and the American Civil
Liberties Union have been working to get Ten Commandments monuments moved off
government property in Utah. The organization has found eight of the nine
monuments known to be in the state.
But the ninth one has eluded the group.
So, the ACLU of Utah posted an alert on its Web site, at http://www.acluutah.org,
asking state residents to visit their local public parks and city buildings to
look for a reddish-gray marble monument that is rounded on top and in the form
of two tablets. Prime possibilities are Logan, Brigham City, Hurricane,
Midvale, Midway and Tremonton.
Once the monument is located, the ACLU wants to get it moved
off government property.
The monuments were donated during the 1950s and 1960s by the
Fraternal Order of Eagles to cities where the nondenominational group held
conventions. In the 1970s, an effort to remove them began, with opponents
arguing that their placement on public property violates church-state
separation.
Supporters, though, contended that the Ten Commandments
displays are largely secular. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in
1973, ruling in a suit that a monument in Salt Lake City could remain on public
property.
The fight revved up again in 1999 when members of the Summum
religion filed a federal lawsuit to force the city of Ogden to allow them to
erect their own monument displaying their "Seven Aphorisms." The 10th
Circuit ruled that the city must either allow the Summum structure or remove
the Ten Commandments monument.
The ruling played into negotiations between cities and civil
rights attorney Brian Barnard and the ACLU, which led to the recent removal of
the monuments from public property in Roy, Tooele and Ogden.
Other cities, including Provo, moved their monuments to
private property before the ACLU got involved. Other municipalities that have
removed them are Salt Lake City, Murray and West Valley. And Barnard is working
to get the eighth monument, one in Pleasant Grove, moved.
Many still believe the monuments should have remained where
they were.
"Most of the people enjoy them," said Tony
Jacketta, manager of the Fraternal Order Of Eagles aerie in Salt Lake City.
"If you don't want to look at them, you don't have to."
Barnard insists that he is not against the Ten Commandments
and said most of the monuments have been moved to prominent locations on
private land where more people see them.
"If this world is a better place for displaying the Ten
Commandments, I'm all for it," he said.
As of Tuesday, the search for the ninth monument had
produced few leads. ACLU staff attorney Janelle Eurick said she received a lot
of calls telling her where she could go -- none of the locations were where she
might find the final monument.
And Bernard got his share of callers.
"All of them say I've been assigned to a very warm spot
in Hades," he said.